


A Little Unsteady

by spaghettipolicy



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Dream Sex, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Makeover, Masturbation, Porn Watching, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Stalking, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2018-10-30 22:49:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10886541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaghettipolicy/pseuds/spaghettipolicy
Summary: For the first time since she lost her bet with Frank, Dee has her apartment all to herself. She plans to make the most of it, but then a drunk Charlie turns up at her door. WIP.





	1. Chapter 1

_One year._

It had been exactly one year since Dee last slept in a bed by herself. Per the terms of her bet with Frank, she’d fallen asleep sandwiched between Mac and Dennis every night for the last twelve months. She’d tolerated their snores, their dreamful muttering, their tossing and turning. She’d tolerated being woken up in the middle of the night trapped in a tangle of limbs every time the pair of not-so-secret lovers reached for each other in their sleep, and on more than one occasion Dee had suppressed the urge to gag when she discovered her brother’s morning wood pressed against her ass. The only silver lining was that Old Black Man’s body heat kept her feet warm through the winter.

Since she had no privacy, Dee’s sex life had gone straight down the tubes. Masturbating was out of the question, too. There was no way to do it inconspicuously while sharing a bed with three other people. Even the bathroom with its detachable shower head offered no respite, since Mac or Dennis inevitably came barging in every time she tried to use it.

It had been a miserable year. A miserable, irritable, horny year.

_But_ , Dee thought with a smirk, surveying her finally empty apartment, _now_ _it was over_. Her three bedmates were gone for good, she’d spent the day cleaning up the whirlwind of chaos they’d left behind, and now she planned to spend a luxurious evening all by herself with a bottle of Malbec and a fresh pack of batteries. No intrusions. No interruptions. She showered, put on her pajamas, dimmed the lights, and made herself comfortable on the sofa.

Forty-five minutes into the Blu-Ray version of _Emmanuelle in Venice_ , the three glasses of wine she’d drunk began to warm her from within, and Dee’s mind started wandering. Inspired by the campy but sexy movie on TV, she imagined eager hands traveling up and down her body and lips trailing kisses along her neck. Usually her fantasies involved one or more specific men, but right now she was too wound up to be discriminating. Hell, she would have fucked Cricket had he walked through the door just then.

(Okay, maybe not Cricket. But pretty much anybody else would have been acceptable.)

Dee closed her eyes as she slipped one hand beneath the waistband of her pajama pants, and a soft moan escaped her mouth as her fingertips found her clit. God, it had been ages since anybody had touched her like this, including herself. She needed to come, and badly. Fortunately, her trusty vibrator was standing by on the coffee table, reporting for duty with its brand-new supply of Duracells. She picked it up, strategically positioned it between her legs, and turned it on. A jolt shot through her body as it buzzed to life, and she moaned again.

_Bzzzzzzzz!_

The sound of the front door buzzer made Dee jump. Who was bothering her at this hour? Probably Dennis or Mac, knowing those two assholes. Well, whatever. Let them think she wasn’t at home. If it was important they could come back tomorrow morning. This was the first alone time Dee had had in months, and she wasn’t about to sacrifice it to help her stupid friends do some bullshit errand on her schedule.

_Bzzzzzzzz!_

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Dee said aloud through gritted teeth. This time she switched off the vibrator, shoved it under a throw pillow, straightened her clothes, and stalked to the front door to look through the peephole.

_God. Dammit._

Instead of Mac or Dennis, Charlie stood in the hallway, and judging by his vacant expression and the way he swayed on his feet like one of those windsock people from the gas station, he was absolutely shitfaced.

“Charlie, what the hell are you doing here?” Dee snapped through the closed door.

“Frank kicked me out,” he slurred. “Can I sleep on your couch?”

“Oh, hell no,” Dee refused. “I _just_ cleaned this place up, and you’re plastered. I don’t need you puking all over my living room.”

“I’m not gonna puke,” Charlie protested. “I just wanna lie down is all. Please, Dee? I promise I won’t make a mess.”

In spite of herself, Dee felt a little sorry for Charlie. She knew all too well how it felt to be dumped by Frank and left to fend for herself, and whereas Mac and Dennis would have waltzed in and made themselves right at home without giving any thought to Dee’s comfort, Charlie at least was courteous enough to ask permission. And besides, he was already stumbling drunk. If he laid down, it would be a few minutes tops before he passed out and Dee could get back to what she was doing in the privacy of her bedroom.

_Sigh._

“Okay, fine. You can sleep on the sofa. But don’t make me regret this, Charlie.” At that, Dee yanked open the door harder than was necessary and Charlie, who had been leaning against it, fell over the threshold with a thud that made Dee cringe.

“Jesus. Christ.” Dee was regretting her decision already.

She stooped to help Charlie into a sitting position. He sat on the floor, head bobbing slightly, and probed the inside of his mouth with one finger. “Aw, shit,” he mumbled. “I think I chipped a tooth a second ago. Do you see a little piece of it anywhere?”

“Show me,” she said, and he grinned unnaturally so she could inspect the damage. His teeth were intact, or at least as close to intact as Charlie’s teeth could ever be.

“You’re fine. Come on, get up,” Dee said brusquely, grasping his hands in both of hers and pulling him to his feet. “I was just getting ready to go to bed, so I want you to lay down over here and go to sleep.” He stumbled a little as she steered him toward the sofa, and she grabbed his elbow to catch him before he went down. “Charlie, this is ridiculous even for you,” she said. “How much did you have to drink tonight?”

“Couldn’t even tell you,” Charlie shook his head. “Frank and I found this mini-keg under the bridge today, and it was still pretty full by the time we got to it—”

“I don’t care. I do not care,” Dee interrupted. “Just sit down, okay? What’s Frank doing, anyway?”

Charlie sank down onto the sofa. “Oh, he crashed a bachelor party tonight. This girl came out of a cake and, long story short, I’m pretty sure they’re banging right now. He told me I could come stay here.” As he spoke, he shucked off his dirty sneakers and swung his legs up over the arm of the sofa. Even as short as he was, Dee’s couch was too small to accommodate his frame.

“ _Frank_ told you to come here?” Dee repeated.

“Yeah, he said you wouldn’t care.”

“Of course he did.” She would deal with him some other time. “Okay, well, I’m going to bed, so if you need anything . . . don’t bother me.”

“Whoa, Dee!” Charlie exclaimed, suddenly animated. “What were you watching?” A bleary smile broke out across his face.

_Fuck._ Dee had forgotten about _Emmanuelle_ on the TV.

“Nothing. It’s an art-house movie. Don’t worry about it,” she said, grabbing the remote and punching the power button.

“It looked like that chick porn they show on the Oprah channel after midnight,” Charlie remarked. Then, as if on cue, he grabbed the throw pillow concealing Dee’s vibrator, somehow switching the toy on in the process. It came to life again with a noisy buzz, and before Dee could react he had picked it up. She watched, silently horrified, as he inspected it with a furrowed brow.

“Is this . . .” he began, but his voice quickly trailed off.

“Goddammit, Charlie, give me that!” Dee barked, snatching the toy from his hands and switching it off. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.

As drunk as he was, Charlie seemed to be putting the pieces together: the sleazy movie, the sex toy, Dee’s agitated state when she answered the door. “Dee, were you pounding off where I’m sitting?” he asked, dissolving into peals of laughter.

“Girls don’t ‘pound off,’ Charlie!” Dee spat back. “And I don’t know what you think is so funny. Everybody knows you like to jack it in the bar basement, so you don’t have a lot of room to talk.”

Infuriatingly, this only made Charlie laugh harder. Dee was seriously considering throwing him back out when he suddenly went silent.

“Oh my God, I’m gonna be sick,” he muttered, looking gray.

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare!” Dee grabbed his arm. “Get in the bathroom now.” But before she could get him to his feet, Charlie lurched forward and vomited what looked like a gallon of undigested alcohol down his front, coating his shirt, his pants, his socks, the couch cushion, and the carpet beneath his feet.

A fearsome, icy calm came over Dee. Biting back the urge to scream she said only, “Bathroom. _Now_.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #sorrynotsorry

Charlie didn’t exactly prioritize personal hygiene in the best of times, but right now he was a walking biohazard. It took all Dee’s willpower not to retch herself as he stripped off his ruined clothes and tossed them in the garbage bag she provided. After supplying him with a spare toothbrush from the medicine cabinet and helping him into the shower (sitting, at her insistence; he was too drunk to safely be left alone standing on wet porcelain), she returned to the living room to attack the vomit stains on her furniture and carpet with a bucket of hot soapy water. She was furious, and she channeled her aggression into scrubbing at the mess with a hard-bristled brush. _God damn Charlie for showing up sloppy drunk, ruining her night, and trashing her living room. God damn Frank for sending him over. God damn Mac and Dennis, too, just because,_ she thought. She took intermittent breaks while she worked to guzzle from the bottle of Malbec.

Half an hour later, the sound of the water pressure slowing to a trickle alerted Dee that Charlie had finished showering.

“Don’t get up!” she called. “Wait for me.” The last thing she needed was for him to slip climbing out of the tub and crack his skull on the tile. Then she could spend the rest of her night cleaning up puke _and_ blood.

Back in the bathroom, Charlie was still seated on the floor of the shower, hugging his knees to his chest. Dee pulled back the curtain and he looked up at her, still visibly drunk but not as sickly as he appeared earlier.

“Your shampoo really burns,” he complained. “It feels like I got pepper sprayed.”

“Well, it doesn’t actually belong in your eyes, so I’m not sure what you were expecting.”

Dee handed him a towel, pointedly looking anywhere but right at him. It had been a long time since she’d last been laid, but not long enough that she had any desire to ogle a naked Charlie Kelly. “Come on,” she urged. “Put it on so we can get you out of here.” Charlie obediently wrapped the towel around his waist, and with some effort she helped him to his feet and out of the tub. Together they shuffled back to Dee’s bedroom where she had laid out clean clothes for him: an oversized T-shirt she used to sleep in and a pair of men’s sweatpants left behind by some ex-hookup.

Dee turned away as Charlie began toweling off, shaking her head with a mixture of frustration and disbelief. What were the odds that he’d be the first naked man to end up in her bedroom after she evicted Mac and Dennis?

 _Honestly, with my luck the odds are pretty high,_ she thought grimly. Of course expecting one night to herself was too much to ask for. Of course she’d wind up cleaning up after one of her tool friends yet again. A drunk, naked Charlie in her room was like the fuck-you cherry on top of the shit sundae. If she wasn’t afraid he might projectile vomit all over her bedroom, Dee would have liked to slap him senseless.

“You’re being really nice to me,” Charlie remarked, interrupting her venomous internal monologue.

“Yeah, because I’m trying to keep you from getting any more bodily fluids on my furniture,” Dee said.

“I’m really sorry about that, by the way. I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Let’s just move past it, all right?” Dee turned back the covers and motioned for Charlie to get into bed. Instead he just stood there looking puzzled.

“You want me to sleep in here?” he asked.

“So there’s no confusion, Charlie, I don’t _want_ you here _at all_ ,” Dee replied, “but the couch is wet now so that doesn’t leave us with many options.” She pointed to a wastebasket standing on his side of the bed. “If you need to toss your cookies again, do it in there,” she instructed, climbing under the covers. “And stay over there on your side. I don’t want you getting friendly with me in the middle of the night. I’ve had enough of that from Mac and Dennis.”

Charlie’s eyes widened. “Is there something you guys haven’t told me, or . . . ?”

“For Christ’s sake, no, Charlie! Just get into bed and stop yammering,” Dee snapped.

He complied. Dee climbed in next to him, taking care to put as much distance between them as possible, switched off the bedside lamp, and pulled the covers up under her chin. _So much for getting to take the edge off_ , she thought. She was still as wound up now as she was when the night began, but with aggravation rather than sexual tension. On the bright side, she was only sharing her bed with one other person tonight, so she actually had some room to sprawl out and make herself comfortable.

A few minutes passed in which Dee’s irritation finally gave way to exhaustion. She had been running around all day restoring her apartment to its pre-Mac-and-Dennis state and now at last the effort was catching up to her. Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed. Just as she was on the verge of nodding off, Charlie’s voice startled her awake again:

“Hey, Dee?”

“What, Charlie?”

“Thanks for letting me stay here. I’d have had to sleep in the hall again otherwise.”

“Fine. You’re welcome. Just go to sleep, okay?” she mumbled.

“Okay.”

Dee nestled deeper under the covers and closed her eyes again. She could faintly hear the sound of Charlie breathing next to her, but other than that her room was blessedly quiet and tranquil for the first time in a year. Nobody was fighting her for her share of the mattress or monopolizing the bedspread, and as long as she tuned out what little noise he was making, she could almost forget Charlie was just a few feet away.

“Hey, Dee?”

_Almost._

“What, Charlie?”

“I know I don’t say this very often, but I think of you as one of my best friends. For real.”

At that, Dee rolled her eyes. Of course Charlie would pick the most inopportune possible moment to delve into his feelings.

“That’s great, Charlie. Thanks. Now please go to sleep.”

Another few minutes lapsed, and this time Dee had already fallen into a light sleep when she was jolted awake yet again.

“Hey, Dee?”

“WHAT?! Oh my _God_ , Charlie, what now? I’m trying to sleep, for fuck’s sake!”

“I know, I just wondered: Do you ever, like, lie awake at night and feel like you’re the only person awake?”

“You’re not the only person awake, Charlie,” Dee hissed, “because YOU KEEP WAKING ME UP. Now go the hell to sleep or you really _will_ be sleeping in the hall, all right?”

“Okay, jeez.”

At long last, Charlie rolled over onto his side, and within a few minutes his slow, even breathing had transformed into soft snores. Before long, Dee drifted off, too.

Most of the time, Dee wasn’t a very vivid dreamer, and she rarely remembered what she dreamed about unless it was something upsetting, like her recurring nightmare about giving her Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actress and suddenly realizing she was wearing nothing but her back brace. But tonight was different. Maybe it was because she deviated from her usual bedtime routine by angrily pounding a bunch of red wine before going to sleep, or maybe it was because of the vintage softcore porn she watched earlier, or maybe—God help her—it was because she was lying next to Charlie, but tonight her subconscious decided to put on a particularly memorable show.

Dee opened her eyes and stole a look at the clock on her nightstand. 2:33 AM. She realized she was cold and noticed someone had thrown the covers off her. Then she saw that Charlie was gone. A light in the hallway and the sound of running water told her he was in the bathroom. A moment later she could hear the faucet turn off, followed by the hallway going dark and footsteps padding back into the bedroom. The door creaked open, and she could vaguely see a male form in the dim light filtering through the window. It tiptoed into the room, but instead of returning to Charlie’s side of the bed, it sat down on Dee’s side. She felt a hand slide up her leg to caress her hip.

“What the hell?”

Dee reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp to find Josh Groban sitting next to her. She stared at him, wide-eyed with bafflement. Josh Groban just grinned.

“I’m sorry, Dee. Did I startle you?” he asked.

“Josh? Josh Groban? What are you doing here?” Dee stammered.

Josh Groban smiled fondly at her. “I wanted to see you, Dee. I hope that’s okay,” he explained.

“I—yeah. Yeah, of course it’s okay! I just don’t understand . . . how did you get into my apartment? How do you know where I live?”

This made him laugh. “Well, I don’t want to give away _too_ much,” he teased, “but I have my ways.” He reached up to caress Dee’s face. “Groban has never been one to let a beautiful woman slip through his fingers, and you, Dee Reynolds, are easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“You know my name?”

“How could I forget? I saw your routine at the Helium last month. You were so funny!” Josh Groban chuckled at the memory.

Dee was dumbfounded. “Wow, I—nobody’s ever said that to me before,” she murmured. “Usually people just boo and yell at me to get off the stage.”

“Jealousy,” Josh Groban explained. “I see it all the time in my line of work. “People without our gifts have to belittle us to feel better about themselves. It’s really terribly sad. But you know what? You’re above all that. I could tell from the moment I first saw you.”

“I don’t know what to say!” Dee marveled, placing her hand over Josh Groban’s. “This is too good to be true, Josh. I almost can’t believe it’s really you.”

Josh Groban gave Dee a smile that sent a shiver through her, then leaned in to whisper in her ear, “Would you like me to prove it to you?”

Dee looked up at Josh Groban through her eyelashes. In as innocent a voice as she could muster, she asked, “How?”

In response, Josh Groban traced the curve of Dee’s ear with the tip of his tongue, then sucked on the lobe. “Let me make love to you, Dee” he breathed.

“Oh, Josh, yes! Take me. Please, take me!” Dee exclaimed, throwing herself into Josh Groban’s arms.

Josh Groban snapped his fingers, and from somewhere in the apartment Josh Groban’s “Remember When It Rained” began to play.

“How did you do that?” Dee gasped.

“Shhhhh,” he pressed a finger to her lips. “Don’t say another word. Let’s let our bodies do the talking. We can make beautiful music together, you and I.” He leaned in to give Dee a deep, sensuous kiss, and she moaned into his mouth in response. Then, without any warning, John Groban flipped Dee onto her back and yanked open her pajama top, scattering buttons everywhere.

“Oh, Josh, you’re so masculine!” she cried, pulling him down to kiss her again. Josh Groban pressed his lips to her neck and nibbled on the soft flesh there as he slipped off her pajama pants in one fluid motion.

“Let me pleasure you, Dee,” he said seductively, running his hands along the length of her nude body.

“Yes, Josh, please!” Dee begged.

At that point, Josh Groban stood up to undress himself. He pulled his gray cotton muscle shirt off over his head and flung it aside. Then he unbuttoned his pants and stepped out of them. Dee could feel herself tingling all over in anticipation as he covered her body with his own. She was already wet with arousal, and she dug her nails into Josh Groban’s back and moaned as he entered her.

“Fuck me, Josh Groban!” Dee urged, as he thrust into her harder and deeper. Josh Groban bent his head to kiss Dee’s neck again and she gasped at the sensation.

“God, Dee, you’re so tight,” Josh Groban murmured in her ear.

_Only . . ._

Only he didn’t sound like Josh Groban anymore. He sounded like Charlie. He picked his head up to gaze into Dee’s eyes, and she saw that he no longer had Josh Groban’s face anymore, either. He had Charlie’s face.

He was Charlie. Dee was fucking Charlie. An uncharacteristically well-groomed, fragrant, sexually attractive Charlie, but Charlie nonetheless. His hair was clean and combed, his usual scruff had been trimmed into a tidy beard, and he smelled like English Leather instead of his signature mélange of stale sweat and God knows what else. Without the veneer of filth, Dee could clearly see every freckle on his nose, and when he leaned in to kiss her she tasted mint instead of cheap beer or cheese.

Dee should have been brimming with questions about everything happening around her, but she was strangely unperturbed.

“Oh, God, Charlie, fuck me harder!” she demanded, and he obligingly picked up the pace.

“Come for me,” he encouraged her. “I want you to come for me.” She wrapped her legs around his waist, coaxing him deeper into her, and slipped a hand between them to stimulate her clit. She was so close to coming. So close—

A piercing, high-pitched _beep-beep-beep_ startled Dee awake. Her alarm clock was blaring next to her on the nightstand, and she fumbled to hit the snooze button. Daylight was streaming in through the window. She looked at the time: 7:30 AM.

Looking down, Dee realized she was fully clothed. She turned to her right and saw Charlie still fast asleep beside her, a chain of drool trickling from the corner of his mouth to pool on the pillow beneath him. He had kicked off the covers, and Dee could see he was still wearing his T-shirt and sweats from last night, and he looked as disheveled as ever.

As she stared at the ceiling and replayed the dream still fresh in her mind, Dee could only say aloud, “What the _fuck_?”


	3. Chapter 3

For one awful moment, Dee was gripped by the thought that perhaps the dream had been real. It certainly had _felt_ real. She could still smell the cologne dream-Charlie had been wearing. She could feel the bristling softness of his beard against her cheek and his hot breath on her neck. Sliding a hand between her legs, she noticed that she was still wet, too. She had almost come in her sleep, and that never happened.

Correction: Charlie (or the dream version of the same) had almost _made_ her come in her sleep. Charlie Kelly, rat assassin extraordinaire, was the image her subconscious produced when Josh Groban couldn’t get the job done, and that was a horrifying thought.

It was immediately followed by another, even more horrifying thought: What if Charlie knew Dee had dreamed about him? What if he heard her talking in her sleep, urging him to fuck her harder? Even more nauseating, what if she had touched him—or worse—not realizing he was him? Dreaming about banging Charlie was mortifying all on its own, but acting on it in her sleep? That would have been the ultimate humiliation.

But after sneaking a look at Charlie, Dee reassured herself that the very idea was ridiculous. He had been falling-down drunk the night before and he was still out cold on his side of the bed, a chain of drool snaking from the corner of his mouth to pool on the pillow below. No way could he have even gotten it up. Plus, they were both still fully clothed. Somnambulant sex was out of the question.

She allowed herself a small sigh, relieved.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Charlie said.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie!” Dee shrieked, hands covering her heart involuntarily. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Charlie rolled from his stomach onto his back and wiped the saliva from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he offered. He winced against the daylight filtering into the room and covered his eyes with his forearm.

“How long have you been awake?” Dee asked, trying to sound casual.

He snorted. “Like, hours. You were all over me all night.”

Dee felt like her stomach was sinking through the floor. “What do you mean?”

Charlie shifted onto his side to face her. “You kept trying to get up on me,” he explained, visibly amused. “You kept rolling over and putting your arm around me. I think you even tried to kiss me once,” he chuckled. “And you were talking in your sleep, just on and on.”

Dee suddenly felt like her heart was pumping ice water instead of blood. She decided to feign surprise. “I was? What did I say?”

“Just a lot of gibberish.”

_Oh, thank fuck._

“All I could make out was Josh Groban’s name, like, a hundred times.”

_…  fuck._

“I heard my name in there a couple times, too.”

_FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK._

If she kept her face blank and her tone of voice steady, Dee thought, maybe Charlie wouldn’t notice she was being eaten alive by embarrassment. “Weird,” she said, trying to cover up her shame with disinterest.

“Yeah, think about how it felt for me,” Charlie teased. “I never knew you felt that way about me, Dee.”

“I don’t feel that way about you, Charlie,” Dee barked, suddenly defensive. “I don’t think I need to remind you I wasn’t planning on sharing my bed last night, with you or anybody. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s _all_.”

Charlie held his hands up in surrender, eyes round and alarmed. “Hey, I’m not judging. I know I kinda ruined your night. It makes sense you were still sorta, y’know . . .”

“Sorta what?”

“Sorta . . . wound up.”

Dee felt her cheeks getting hot. “Yeah, well, thanks for understanding,” she mumbled, hoping that would bring the conversation to a close.

“It’s no big thing,” Charlie assured her. “You’re not the first lady who ever tried to help herself to some of the Charlie Kelly buffet.”

“Okay, could you not?” Dee cringed.

“I’ll tell you what, though,” he went on. “Even with all the groping, sharing a bed with you is way nicer than sharing with Frank. I got all this room to move around, and I only heard, like, one cat outside last night.”

“That’s . . . great, Charlie.”

“I know, right?” he agreed. Then, with a look Dee couldn’t read he added, “I’m thinking we should sleep together more often.”

Dee’s eyes widened. “I’m _not_ thinking that,” she said. “I’m not thinking that at all, Charlie.”

“Not all the time,” he clarified. “Just once in a while, like when I need a break from Frank, or he’s banging one of his strippers in our bed or whatever.”

“Yeah, no. Last night was a one-time deal. You’re on your own next time Frank brings home some hooker he found in a goddamn cake.”

“You sure?” he asked with a sideways grin.

“I’m very sure.”

“Not even if I promise to show you a good time?”

“Oh, my God, blechhh!” Dee looked disgusted. “Please never say that again. Ever.”

“Don’t act like you never thought about it, Dee,” Charlie prodded. “Everyone knows you’ve been having a dry spell for like a year.”

“So what?”

“So sometimes when people have dry spells they consider stuff they wouldn’t normally, you know?”

“Charlie, there are ‘dry spells’ and then there are ‘lost every last particle of my dignity’ spells,” Dee explained. “I’m not there. I will never be there.”

“You say that now,” Charlie said, “but you sure sounded like you were there last night.”

“That doesn’t mean anything!” Dee snapped, her voice getting shrill and agitated. “You can’t decide what you dream about. It just happens.”

Charlie shrugged in resignation. “Hey, I’m not gonna twist your arm. Just know that the invitation stands.”

Dee was dumbfounded. “ _Where_ is this coming from all of a sudden? I thought you only had eyes for the Waitress.”

“Oh, we’re definitely still an item,” Charlie replied. “But, like, if you’re sharing a bed with a lady, it’s a point of pride to make it worth her while.”

“ _We are not sharing a bed, Charlie_ ,” Dee corrected. “Not after last night. Not ever again. And since when do you have pride?”

Charlie looked offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Seriously? You live in a studio apartment with no toilet. You bludgeon vermin to death for a living, you spend most of your waking life in dirty thermal underwear and a T-shirt you never wash, and you brush your teeth every leap year. When I think about famous seducers, you aren’t exactly at the top of the list.”

Now Charlie looked slightly hurt. “Well, maybe not, but I’ve got other stuff to offer.”

“That may be, Charlie,” Dee agreed. “But what woman in her right mind is gonna want to get close enough to find out for sure?”

“Ouch, Dee.”

He rolled onto his back again and stared at the ceiling for a few long moments. Then: “So you’re saying if I brushed my teeth more you’d consider it?”

“No! That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I’m saying. I _do not want to have sex with you_ , Charlie, and I’m not gonna change my mind just because you suddenly discovered dental hygiene.”

A long, increasingly uncomfortable silence followed this exchange, and in spite of herself Dee felt a pang of guilt about her remarks. They weren’t untrue—Dee had met homeless people more invested in grooming themselves than Charlie was—but Charlie’s slovenly ways weren’t entirely his fault. His mother’s awful, negligent parenting surely deserved some of the blame. Nobody had ever bothered to teach him how to make himself look presentable. How could he be expected to just know?

Charlie seemed to understand this, too, because his next question was, “So if I stepped up the showers and the brushing my teeth and whatever else, do you think I might be able to close the deal with the Waitress?”

Dee’s honest answer was “absolutely no fucking way,” but rather than hurt his feelings further with the truth, she decided to give him some false hope. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, it couldn’t hurt to try.”

Charlie nodded, absorbing this information. “Okay. Okay, cool! And you’ll help me?”

“Uh, I didn’t say that.”

“C’mon, Dee,” Charlie said pitifully. “You’re a girl. You know what turns girls on. I need your expertise.”

“Charlie, just buy an issue of GQ or something and copy the pictures. It’s not hard.”

“Please, Dee? If you help me I promise I’ll pay you back.”

Dee rolled her eyes “How?”

For a moment Charlie was silent, brow furrowed with concentration as he tried to come up with a satisfactory answer. Finally, inspired, he replied, “I’ll wingman for you every time you go to that shitty martini bar you love so much.”

This was a curveball Dee hadn’t expected, but perhaps she could make it work to her advantage. Charlie didn’t really have the charisma to be a useful wingman, but he was short enough to ruffle some alpha-bros’ feathers. Guys were competitive, and it would irritate them to see Dee out on the town with somebody she towered over in heels. They’d feel motivated to prove that she could be having a better time with them than with Charlie. Her year-long dry spell could soon be over.

“How long?” Dee questioned.

“I dunno. A month?”

“Three months,” she countered.

“Deal,” Charlie agreed. “Shake on it?”

She shook his hand.

“So how do we start?” he asked.

“Well, it’s morning, so I’d suggest starting with a shower.”

“But I just had a shower.”

“I know,” Dee said, “but it’s to get you into the habit. It’s something you should be doing every day anyway.”

“Okay. Okay, I got this,” Charlie said confidently, throwing back the covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Quick question, though: Clothes on or off?”

“What?” Dee was puzzled.

“In the shower. Should my clothes stay on? Or come off?”

Dee closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. For the second time in under twenty-four hours she had agreed to help Charlie, and for the second time in under twenty-four hours she was already regretting her decision.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it takes me over a year to publish a new chapter. WOMP WOMP.

Once before, Charlie asked Dee to help make him over. He was trying to win over the Waitress then, too, and he blackmailed Dee into outfitting him in a tweed suit scrounged from the Salvation Army. But instead of the romantic rendezvous he had in mind, the night ended with the Waitress announcing she'd fucked Frank, and Charlie in tears.

Dee predicted this attempt would be equally unsuccessful. No amount of manscaping on earth would change the fact that the Waitress detested Charlie, and Dee couldn’t blame her. What Charlie thought of as wooing met the legal definition of stalking, and although he was harmless it was still desperate, creepy, unsexy behavior.

But a deal was a deal. If Dee went back on it now she would lose her wingman, and much as she hated to admit it, she really needed him. Dee wondered if her year of celibacy had thrown her pheromones out of whack or something, but her game was slipping and it frightened her. This afternoon when she and Charlie got to the dentist’s office, Dee tried flirting with the square-jawed male receptionist who checked them in, but he didn’t crack a smile or return any of her playful banter. Later she made eye contact from across the room with a paunchy, middle-aged dad, holding his gaze as she dropped a copy of _Highlights_ to the floor and strategically flashing some cleavage as she bent to pick it up. He just rolled his eyes and looked annoyed, and Dee felt her stomach drop.

No, if today was any indication, Dee’s dry spell showed no signs of ending any time soon. Still, she thought, recalling the previous night, if she could make Charlie look half as good as he had in her dream, by this time next week she’d be swimming in dick. There was something about seeing a woman fawn over a short man that rankled the cocky, athletic guys Dee favored. Dennis would probably say this was because Charlie had lower “social market value” than a taller, buffer guy, and seeing him punch above his weight would appeal to the male competitive instinct. Dennis’ weird theories about courtship were mostly bullshit, but that one kind of made sense.

“Ms. Reynolds?” Dee looked up to see a scowling dental assistant steering Charlie into the waiting room by one elbow. Charlie’s mouth was packed with bloodstained cotton, and he looked bleary-eyed.

Dee stood up, alarmed. “What the hell happened? He was just here for a cleaning.”

“He had a little anxiety attack when the exam began,” the assistant replied. “We had to put him under twilight anesthesia to stop him from biting.” She displayed some heavily bandaged fingers. “The good news is that even though his inattention to his own oral hygiene is, in a word, egregious, there was less structural decay than we expected. The teeth he has left are amazingly resilient.” As she spoke, the assistant handed Dee a goody bag full of travel-sized toothpastes and rolls of floss. “Don’t let him operate any heavy machinery for the next few hours, and six months from now when it’s time for his next cleaning, please take him somewhere else.”

Charlie swayed on his feet as the assistant let go of his arm, and Dee instinctively reached out to steady him. “You okay?” she asked. He groaned something unintelligible in response. He seemed to be struggling to focus his eyes on Dee, and he had a distant, hazy smile on his face.

“I guess that’s a yes,” she shrugged. “C’mon. Let’s get you into the car.”

They had been on the road for less than five minutes when Charlie fished the wad of bloody gauze out of his mouth and stuck it in the cup holder. Dee opened her mouth in protest, but before she could yell at him Charlie leaned over and rested his head on her shoulder. Her body stiffened.

“Man, Dee, I don’t know how to thank you for this,” he mumbled. His mouth was swollen, and his consonants came out garbled. “None of this would be happening without your help. I feel like a finally have a real shot with the Waitress now, you know?”

Dee frowned. “Well, don’t thank me just yet, Charlie. We still have a lot of work to do. We have to get you to the barber, get you some new clothes—”

“I know, I know,” Charlie interrupted. “But I feel like it’s all starting to come together, you know? Like, the Waitress has this picture in her head of the guy she _thinks_ she wants, right? And if I can just look like that guy, I can finally make her realize the guy she really wants is me.” He smiled to himself at the thought, and Dee cringed inwardly. She didn’t know what to say so she went with a forced, “That’s really nice, Charlie.”

Why did she feel guilty? It wasn’t her fault Charlie’s seduction skills sucked, or that he thought combing his hair and putting on clean clothes could make the Waitress forget she’d spent the last decade loathing him. But nevertheless Dee felt a warm wash of shame come over her. They were on a fool’s errand, and she knew it would all blow up in Charlie’s face before long, and still she was taking advantage of him for personal gain.

 _But wait_ , she thought. _Who cares?_ Taking advantage of each other for personal gain was what the gang _did_. They exploited one another at every possible turn. Hell, how many times had Charlie played her in the past? And how was this time any different?

But before Dee could answer her own question, they had pulled up in front of the barber shop. Moral quandaries would have to wait until later.

Inside, they were given a chilly greeting by a receptionist with a handlebar mustache and long ginger hair in a topknot with shaved sides. He gave Charlie a critical up-and-down look, then turned to Dee and said, “We don’t do homeless.”

“Oh, he’s not homeless,” Dee assured him. “He’s just gross.”

“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked, looking skeptical.

“We do. 2:45 under Reynolds.”

He consulted the schedule and looked annoyed to see Dee’s name there. “Right this way,” he said, gesturing Charlie toward an empty chair.

Dee sat in the nearby waiting area and tried to force herself to concentrate on anything but the snooty receptionist, but her gaze kept drifting back to him involuntarily. The guy’s skimpy tank top left little to the imagination, and Dee found her mind wandering as her eyes raked over his well-muscled back and arms. He seemed like a prize douche, but he was still hot as long as he didn't talk. She imagined grabbing onto his stupid ponytail to anchor herself as he knelt between her legs and felt a surge of heat all the way to her groin, which was immediately followed by an almost explosive sigh of frustration. It wasn't fair that sexy men were allowed to just, like, wander around freely while Dee was this horny and neglected. She grabbed a magazine to fan her flushed skin and felt almost attacked by the cover image of a shirtless Idris Elba.

"Oh, goddammit!" she snapped, tossing the magazine away.

The receptionist scowled at her, one eyebrow cocked in puzzlement.

"It's, I — uh, papercut," she offered clumsily, looking away.

Embarrassed, Dee began counting ceiling tiles to distract herself from any further intrusive sexual thoughts. This worked until she reached number 69. How long had it been since she last had a dick in her mouth, anyway? Dee realized she couldn't remember and felt a pang of nostalgia. Once upon a time, dick had been an abundant resource with low commercial value. Now it seemed to Dee like an old friend whose address she had lost.

Well, hopefully that would change soon. Maybe even tonight, depending on how adeptly Charlie fulfilled his wingman duties. Remembering Charlie, Dee glanced over to where he sat in the barber chair. A slender, brown-skinned barber with colorfully tattooed arms and a thick head of curly dark hair was shaving Charlie's neck with a straight razor. He had shapely, elegant hands, and Dee imagined them cupping her tits while she sat on the receptionist's face.

She was really going to need a drink after this. Then she realized she couldn't remember the last time a man had bought her a drink either.

_Sigh._

"Hey, Dee, you ready to go?"

Charlie's voice startled Dee out of her pity party. She looked up at him.

_Whoa._

The face looking back at her both was and was not Charlie's face. His mop of hair had been washed, trimmed, and neatly parted, the bangs swept up and to the side. His grizzled beard had been manicured into a designer five o'clock shadow that encircled his jaw in a clean line. It was startling how much a simple haircut and shave had improved his appearance. It made his ratty T-shirt and jeans seem like a bold, ironic choice instead of a sign of poverty, and his face . . . had he always had such bright hazel eyes with such long eyelashes? This wasn't the scruffy, grungy Charlie Dee was used to. This version was _cute,_ possibly even verging on cute-hot.

It was fucked up.

"Uh, yeah. Lemme just go settle up and we'll ditch this sideshow." Dee fumbled in her purse for Frank's credit card as she made her way toward the counter. Charlie followed close behind, and Dee caught the spicy whiff of his aftershave.

"So, you wanna hit the town after this?" he asked. "It's almost happy hour."

Dee scribbled a signature on the sales receipt. "Not yet, we still have to do something about your clothes."

"Admit it, Dee," Charlie teased. "You've been waiting all day to get me undressed."

Dee's head shot up. "What? No, I haven't. What are you — _what?_ " She could feel her face turning red. Charlie grinned and suddenly she felt like she was on fire. Had he always smiled like that? And had that teeny chip in his front tooth?

"I'm just giving you a hard time, Dee, jeez. Don't get all bent outta shape," he laughed, clapping a hand on her shoulder. Dee flinched at the physical contact.

"Okay, well, let's get going," she said, changing the subject. "We don't have a lot of time left if we wanna get a decent table at the bar." A decent table, in this case, meant a table with the most visibility to the guys Dee was hoping would notice her tonight.

"Let's get a move on, then," Charlie agreed. "I wanna be good and loaded an hour from now." They headed for Dee's car.

"Not so fast, Charlie," she reminded him. "You have a job to do tonight. You're supposed to fawn over me and make me look like hot property to all the sexy bros and distract their ugly beta friends so I don't get cockblocked. Understood?"

"Don't worry, Dee," Charlie promised. "I won't let you go home alone." He grinned at her again.

Dee looked away from him and started the car.


	5. Chapter 5

The car ride to Boyds hadn’t taken more than fifteen minutes, but to Dee it felt unusually, uncomfortably longer. She was keenly aware of every second that lapsed, keenly aware of Charlie’s closeness next to her in the passenger’s seat. More than once she caught herself eyeballing him while they sat at a stoplight, and each time she noticed him examining his own reflection in the side view mirror with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness. His expression was hard to interpret. It wasn’t the face Charlie wore when he was deep in thought cooking up some absurd new scheme with Frank, or taking studious mental inventory of what the Waitress was wearing, or composing a song about being violated by giant spiders. There was a softness Dee wasn’t accustomed to seeing, like it was dawning on him for the first time  — just as it had dawned on her back at the barber shop  — that if you subtracted the negligent hygiene and grooming habits from the equation, Charlie was a decent-looking guy.

_ Way more than decent-looking, actually.  _

Of course Dee felt no  _ real _ attraction to Charlie. This was just her overactive sex drive talking. She hadn’t been fucked in so long that it felt like her pussy had booted her brain out of the driver’s seat and taken the wheel. These feelings she was having — this weird restlessness, this sudden preoccupation with her least appealing friend — it was nothing but uncontained lust looking for a target. Sure, he cleaned up astoundingly well, but Charlie was still Charlie: illiterate, glue-huffing Charlie who skulked around in sewers for fun and slept on a pull-out couch with her father. Dee had higher standards than that. Admittedly not  _ much _ higher, but higher. Ish. 

_ Right on, Deandra, now you’re lying to yourself. _

Inside the store, Charlie stood by while Dee tore through neatly folded piles of shirts, crisp new jeans, and racks of button-downs and dress pants, grabbing armfuls of merchandise with abandon, pausing only to check the sizes, and flinging it all down onto the polished countertop along with Frank's credit card. She was hardly an expert on men’s fashion, but she reasoned if she bought enough stuff they’d be able to cobble together at least a few decent outfits. Charlie didn’t have to look like a model; he just needed to be more put-together than he was right now. It was the lowest possible hurdle to clear, and suddenly Dee felt grateful for his untidy habits.  
  
“Shouldn’t I be trying some of this on?” Charlie questioned.  
  
Dee shook her head: “No time for that.” As she saw it, every minute they spent inside the menswear store was a minute wasted that could have been better spent trawling for dick. Plus, she didn’t want to dwell on the implication of a nearly naked Charlie separated from her by only a dressing room door. “Don’t forget,” she added, avoiding his eyes, “this isn’t just for fun. We’re on a mission tonight, and your job is to help me break my dry spell.”  
  
“Uh, don’t _you_ forget,” Charlie countered, “that there’s another side to this bargain, Dee. This isn’t just about getting you laid. It’s also about me finally locking down the Waitress.”  
  
Dee sighed, exasperated. “I haven’t forgotten, Charlie. Just — one thing at a time, okay?” Truthfully, Dee already _had_ kind of forgotten her promise to him. The strangeness of the afternoon had crowded those thoughts right out of her mind. At this point she had one singular goal. Well, two. The first goal was, as it had been all along, to get herself fucked tonight and end her year of sexlessness. But this wasn’t just about getting off anymore. Now that first goal served the secondary purpose of fulfilling her other goal, which was to stop having these fleeting but still unnerving erotic thoughts about Charlie. Despite her best efforts, her mind kept bouncing back and forth from thoughts of how inviting he currently looked, to thoughts of the dream-Charlie that had almost made her come the previous night, to the worrisome thought that the two of them kind of already had history together.   
  
Not sex, but they had kissed once. Okay, more than kissed. They had had a pretty steamy makeout session in Dee’s apartment a couple years back while they were on some def poetry shit. It hadn’t progressed any further than some kissing and groping over clothes, but that was only because the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside had made the two of them spring apart, panicked at the thought of having to explain themselves to one of their dumbass friends. The opening and shutting of a nearby door informed them that it was only a neighbor returning home, but the interruption had broken the spell, and afterward they both made the tacit agreement to never discuss it again. There was some awkwardness between them later that day, and after that it was like nothing had ever happened.  
  
At least, that was how it seemed on the surface, but Dee would be lying if she claimed she had never thought about it again. On the contrary, she’d thought about it more than she cared to admit even to herself, and not for nothing because scarily, Charlie was an amazing kisser: slow, sensuous, and thorough. His lips were much softer than Dee would have imagined, and for a man as sexually inexperienced as she suspected he was, he seemed to have an intuitive sense of what to do with his mouth and hands.  
  
She was getting a little flustered right now just thinking about it.

A clerk ran Frank’s card. Dee thrust the bags of merchandise into Charlie’s arms and raced ahead of him back to the car.

“Slow down, Dee! Goddamn,” Charlie called after her, struggling to keep pace.

Dee ignored him. “I still have to get dressed,” she called over her shoulder.  
  
From there it was a race home to her apartment, where she left Charlie with instructions to find himself an outfit and locked herself in the bathroom to get ready. Years of banging sketchy dudes under illicit circumstances meant Dee was well practiced at getting undressed and redressed fast, so when she emerged fully clothed and made up only ten minutes later, Charlie looked surprised.  
  
Not half as surprised as Dee felt, however. The Charlie seated on her sofa, nervously bouncing his leg up and down, was a stranger. An upsettingly hot stranger.

Dee's eyes traveled from the dress shoes polished to a high shine up the tight new jeans to the burgundy T-shirt that clung to his chest and arms before finally settling on his face again. The price tags still dangling from their plastic fasteners were the only visual clue that it was atypical for him to be this well-dressed, and suddenly Dee felt oddly self-conscious about her own attire. With her getting laid agenda at the fore of her mind, she had selected her skimpiest, most revealing clothing: a top with a V-shaped neckline that plunged almost to her navel, and a skirt that only barely concealed the curve of her ass. She’d felt like hot shit while primping herself in the bathroom mirror, but now, standing in front of Charlie, she felt uncomfortably exposed.

_ Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? _ she thought to herself. This was _ Charlie Kelly _ . Rat-bashing Charlie. Inhalant-abusing Charlie. Ghoul-hunting Charlie. This was not a guy women widely recognized as a catch, and no amount of dressing up could change who he was, so for fuck’s sake  _ why _ was he having this effect on Dee?

“You look nice,” Charlie said. As he spoke, his eyes traveled up her body and down again, and oh holy God Dee needed to sit down. But instead she turned and made a beeline for the kitchen, where there was half a bottle of Skyy vodka stashed away in the cabinet over the stove.

“Where’d you go?” Charlie called from the next room.

“Uh, just doing a quick pre-game,” she yelled back, taking a generous pull straight from the bottle. If she didn’t settle her nerves somehow this evening was going to be a complete shitshow before it even began.

“Sweet, I’ll join you,” Charlie replied, and she could hear the squeak of couch springs followed by his shuffling footsteps.

“No! No, no time,” she yelped, taking another quick slug of vodka, then capping the bottle. “Besides, you’re designated driver tonight.” Jesus, that excuse would never fly. Charlie knew damn well Dee didn’t trust him with her car, and everyone knew designated driving was for pussies. But standing there in the kitchen doorway, Charlie just shrugged. “Sure, if that’s what you want.” He held out a hand, palm open, and Dee tossed him her car keys.

“Go get the engine warmed up and I’ll be right down,” she instructed. Charlie pocketed the keys and disappeared, and after the apartment door clicked shut behind him, Dee braced herself against the kitchen sink. The alcohol was warming her from the inside — or was that something else? — and although she was starting to feel a little buzzed, it didn’t nothing to calm the restless, fluttering sensation somewhere below her stomach.

“I don’t care what happens tonight,” she said aloud to herself. “I am  _ not _ going to fuck Charlie.” 


	6. Chapter 6

The Sapphire Lounge was where Dee came when she wanted to feel posh while guzzling gin and scoping out aging frat bros, but no amount of blue mood lighting or brocade wallpaper could disguise the fact that the place was a dive. Until a year and a half ago it had been called The Pitstop, but after a rash of E. coli deaths it had been permanently shuttered by the city. The new owners made a half-assed effort to class it up with a name change and some updated decor, but the bathroom still bore all the hallmarks of what it used to be: the cracked mirror, the obscene graffiti inside the stalls, the vending machine that ejected disposable sex toys for fifty cents.

It was a well-timed reminder that no matter how you altered a thing’s exterior, you couldn’t change its essential nature.

Dee knew this to be true. Now, sitting alone in the dingy bathroom stall, she tried to force herself to really  _ feel _ it, because she and Charlie had been at the Sapphire for less than thirty minutes and things were already off to a fucked up start.

Charlie, to his credit, hadn’t forgotten the role he was supposed to be playing this evening. The problem was that from the moment they arrived, he’d been inhabiting it just a little too well. When they walked in, he had wound a protective arm around Dee’s waist and shot a stony look at the handful of guys who twisted their necks to get an eyeful of her skimpy outfit. At the bar, he’d ordered for her and nonchalantly opened his wallet like he had money to burn. After they got their drinks, he’d taken her by the hand and led her to the table she’d pointed out to him, pulled out her chair, and laid a hand on her knee. All in all, he was doing a bang-up job of portraying the beta boyfriend with something to prove, and as Dee had hoped they drew the attention of more than a few of the single guys seated around the perimeter of the room.

This was one of those reminders Dee sometimes got that Charlie, while basically devoid of book-smarts, wasn’t the total idiot he allowed everyone to think he was. On the contrary, he could be calculating in a way that was at times genuinely scary, like the time he’d used poor Ruby Taft to make the Waitress jealous, or the time he’d played the rest of the gang against one another to punish Dennis for trying to seduce her. In the years they’d known each other, Dee realized that being the intellectual featherweight of their group of friends gave Charlie a couple of aces up his sleeve: it ensured that everyone kept their expectations of him nice and low, and it meant he had the element of surprise on his side when he felt like cooking up a scheme.

That element of surprise had certainly come into play today, first when Dee had seen how well Charlie cleaned up, and later as she sat sipping an appletini while he ran his fingers lightly up and down her leg, getting dangerously close to the inside of her thigh. When a tall, broad-shouldered guy in a black muscle tee passed by their table, making prolonged eye contact with Dee as he strutted by, Charlie had leaned over and planted a kiss on her neck, and she jumped up so quickly she nearly knocked over her drink.

“What happened?” Charlie asked, looking puzzled.

“Gotta pee,” Dee blurted, rushing for the bathroom.

The ladies’ room was a one-seater, which was a relief because Dee desperately needed a minute alone to chill the fuck out.  _ None of this means anything_, she reminded herself. Charlie was only doing exactly what she’d asked him to do — staking his claim to bait some of the cocky, competitive guys she favored — and it was working! Dudes had been checking her out from the moment she walked in. It was the most validation she’d gotten since losing her bet with Frank, and from some legitimately hot specimens, too. For the first time in a year, Dee felt confident that she didn’t have to go home alone tonight unless she wanted to.

So why wasn’t she elated? More importantly, why weren’t her new prospects helping stem the flow of the very awkward impure thoughts she’d been having about Charlie all afternoon? This bar was crawling with beefcakes, but instead of feeling turned on at the sight of them she felt indifferent. She should have been dying to get naked with one or more of these guys, but instead she was hiding in a bathroom on the cusp of a meltdown because Charlie touched her leg. Her explanation that she was just starved for male attention was losing credibility, and Dee didn’t want to think too hard about what that meant.

A cop-knock on the bathroom door startled Dee out of her ruminations. From the other side an angry voice slurred out, “Jesus, hurry it up! You’re not the only one who needs to take a piss.” But before Dee could come up with a scathing reply, the door she had apparently neglected to lock swung open.

The Waitress swayed in the bathroom doorway, visibly plastered. At the sight of Dee, she sighed theatrically and said, “Oh, God, it’s you.”

Dee recoiled at the reek of alcohol on the Waitress’s breath. “You smell like a still,” she said. “I take it you’re off the wagon again?”

“ _You’re _ off the wagon,” the Waitress retorted, shoving past Dee and stumbling into the lone stall. 

“Good one,” Dee deadpanned. Then, feeling antagonistic: “So, I don’t suppose you ran into Charlie out there?”

“Of course I ran into him,” the Waitress spat. “Fuck my  _ life _ , there seriously isn’t one place in Philly where I’m safe from that little creep.”

As if on cue, the bathroom door opened again and Charlie stuck his head in. His face and shirt were damp, and he wore the slightly manic, purposeful expression he always had when the Waitress was around. “Is she okay?” he asked. “I saw her come in here, like, two minutes ago. Is she sick?”

Dee was annoyed. “She’s fine, Charlie, just drunk. What happened to you? Why are you wet?”

“Oh, nothing, this guy was getting handsy with her and I was protecting her and she threw a daiquiri on me. Nothing out of the ordinary,” Charlie shrugged.

“He was my date, jackass!” the Waitress yelled from inside the stall. “And he left thanks to you, and left me to pay my own tab. Like I have that kind of money.”

“I’ll pay for you,” Charlie offered. “Anything you want.”

“NO!”

Dee placed a hand on his chest. “Charlie, why don’t you go sit back down?” she suggested. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Charlie ignored her. “I don’t understand,” he called back to the Waitress. “All I ever do is try to be nice to you, treat you right, and you act like I’m some kind of monster. I don’t get it. What do I have to do to make you give me a chance?”

The stall door banged open and the Waitress emerged, tugging her skirt down over her thighs as she squeezed past Dee toward the sink. “There is  _ nothing you can do_, Charlie,” she replied, fixing him with a glare that actually made Dee wince. It looked like she was trying to burn a hole in his face with her eyes. “You can’t make someone want you just because you’re nice to them. That’s not how the world works. And you aren’t even ‘nice.’ You’re just fucking weird.”

Charlie looked confused and hurt in equal measure. “I had no idea you felt that way,” he mumbled. “With all the mixed signals you give me—”

"SERIOUSLY?!” the Waitress screeched. “I’m sorry, was I not being clear the billion and one other times I told you to stay away from me? Was the restraining order not clear? What do I have to do or say to make it clear that I will never, ever be interested in you, Charlie?”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“I mean, I think I get it now,” Charlie replied.

“Great!” The Waitress smiled, and Dee couldn’t help but be impressed at her ability to convey hatred even by smiling. “Now if you two dinguses will excuse me, I have a bar tab to walk out on.” She grabbed for the door handle, but Charlie was still standing dumbly in the doorway, blocking her exit. The Waitress threw her free hand up in exasperation. “Are you going to move or what?”

Wordlessly, Charlie stepped to the side, allowing her to pass. A moment later, she disappeared back into the crowded bar.

For a few long seconds, Dee and Charlie just stood there without speaking or looking at each other. Finally, Charlie cleared his throat. “Well, that didn’t go super well.”

“It didn’t go well, Charlie,” Dee replied. “It didn’t go well at all. She really, really hates you.”

“It doesn’t make much sense, does it,” Charlie said. It wasn’t a question.

Dee wanted to point out that in fact it made nothing but sense that over a decade of stalking had failed to make the Waitress fall in love with Charlie, but she knew it was a lost cause. Plus, he looked so crestfallen that she didn’t want to rub salt in the wound. Instead, Dee had an impulse, and before she could consider the wisdom of acting on it, she grabbed Charlie’s hand.

“C’mon,” she said.

“Where?” Charlie asked.

“Back out there. Let’s show her what she’s missing out on.”

Dee made her way toward the entrance of the dimly lit bar, pulling Charlie along behind her. Through the street-facing window they could see the Waitress standing on the curb, presumably waiting for an Uber. Dee tugged Charlie's hand, signaling to him to follow her outside. On the sidewalk, she took a second to consider the Waitress's vantage point, then strategically positioned herself and Charlie.

“Put your arms around me,” she instructed. Charlie looked confused, but he complied.

“Okay,” Dee said in a low voice. “When I say ‘now,’ you’re going to kiss me, got it?”

“Wait, what?” Charlie’s eyes were wide.

“Just do what I say,” she said. She pressed her body up against him but kept her eyes on the Waitress, who was struggling to climb into a waiting car. Dee waited until she was seated inside and fumbling for the open door to let out a loud fake laugh. As planned it caught the Waitress’s attention, and when she looked out the window for the source of the noise Dee whispered, “Now.”

And as instructed, Charlie stood on tiptoe, cupped Dee’s face in his hands, and kissed her with a ferocity that almost knocked her off balance. She stumbled backward a little, instinctively grabbing onto his back to steady herself. Out of the corner of her eye Dee could see the Waitress watching them, her face contorted in disgust, before the car pulled away.

A second later, Charlie pulled back, slightly breathless from the effort. “Did she see?” he asked eagerly.

“Oh, trust me, she saw,” Dee replied with a sly smile. Granted, she hadn’t seemed to  _ care_, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to make Charlie feel better. And as Dee had hoped, his face lit up with a grin. “Aw, damn, Dee, I really owe you one,” he said, a note of laughter in his voice, and Dee couldn’t help but grin back at him.

It was then Dee realized that he was still holding her face in his hands. She still had her arms around him. The lengths of their bodies were still touching each other, their noses only a few inches apart. And for the second time in as many minutes, Dee made a snap decision and pressed her lips against Charlie’s smiling, open mouth.


End file.
